It was a truly historic day for SUP at the recent "INAUGURAL SUPER-DUPER OPEN INVITATIONAL PRO-AM FUN RACE" in Thailand. Sit back and enjoy the spectacle with Sunova Surfboards …and turn up the sound for some bonus commentary from Boss Man

After a couple of seasons on the sidelines, former world number two and perennial podium-getter Lina Augaitis is making a comeback this year. And she’s doing it with the support of a new team: Sunova.

Lina officially joins Team Sunova this week as Canada’s top paddling export aims to return to the pointy end of a sport she helped shape from 2013 to 2015 before taking a break to start a family. → READ MORE

“The last unknown is the sleep deprivation – there are many stories of paddlers seeing dancing bears, people walking on water, trees on fire and hearing strange voices.”

That’s Bart de Zwart talking about the Yukon River Quest, an extraordinary race that stretches for 715km (444 miles) through the Canadian wilderness. The 2016 edition begins in less than 24 hours, and for the first time ever stand up paddlers have been allowed to enter. → READ MORE

The Carolina Cup isn’t just a race. The annual pilgrimage to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina signals not only one of the largest, most competitive and most significant events on the international calendar, it’s also probably your best opportunity to learn from some of the world’s fastest and most talented paddlers.

The Carolina Cup isn’t just a race, it’s a true festival of paddling, and one of the best features of the festival are the clinics. → READ MORE

And just like that, it’s August. This year has flown by. Seems like only yesterday we were getting excited about the first major race of the year, the Carolina Cup. That was four months ago.

We’re now halfway through the international stand up paddling “season,” which loosely runs from April to October (with a couple of outposts in December). Carolina, OluKai, the Worlds, the Euro Tour, Payette and Molokai have already been run and won, while we’ve still got the Gorge Paddle Challenge, Pacific Paddle Games and a few World Series races to look forward to.

So because we’re halfway through the year, I thought it’d be a good time to analyse the best paddlers of 2015 so far. → READ MORE

Despite there being no big races this weekend there have still been a few changes to the SUP Racer World Rankings.

Why? Because it’s been exactly 12 months since the 2014 Ultimate SUP Showdown was held, which means it’s now time for that event to be purged from the system. And considering it was the second highest scoring race of 2014, the Showdown’s removal has had a big impact on the Men’s Top 100 and Women’s Top 50 Leaderboards. → READ MORE

Full recap of the Bilbao World SUP Challenge, Week 4 of the Euro Tour. That was an exciting but also very tense two days of racing. Click through for the full recap and find out what happened… → READ MORE

Connor Baxter and Sonni Hönscheid have just won the 2015 Lost Mills International SUP Race, beating an all star field and establishing a commanding lead on the Euro Tour Leaderboard in the process.

After 18km of long, hot, draining paddling, with a blazing Bavarian sun beating down on competitors, it was the superstar from Starboard who outlasted one of the most elite fields ever seen outside the USA. → READ MORE

Travis Grant and Sonni Honscheid have triumphed at the SUP Race Cup in St. Maxime, France, after an all star field lit up Week 2 of the Euro Tour.

Travis took control of the event after dominating Saturday’s course race, before holding on for a close second place behind Titouan Puyo in Sunday’s 17km event. That handed Trav the overall event title based on combined times, and also delivered a full bag of points for the Euro Tour Leaderboard. → READ MORE

Done. What an epic race that was. Congratulations to Travis Grant and Annabel Anderson – 2015 Carolina Cup CHAMPIONS. Massive effort from Danny Ching and Sonni Honscheid to claim the runner-up positions, and really any paddler in the Top 10/Top 20 deserves a medal. That was hectic out there.

Click through for full results and a full replay of the live webcast… → READ MORE

This week it was Team Canada’s turn in the spotlight, with the Great White North announcing a full squad battle it out in Mexico way from May 10-17. And the lineup looks mighty competitive… → READ MORE

While there have been endless Battle of the Paddle highlight reels in the past week, a new clip out today is one of the slickest yet. Created by Chainsaw Productions for the SIC crew, the video shows Team SIC training at Salt Creek on the eve of the Battle before getting down to business in the Elite Race.

Takes a little while to get going but there’s some awesome race footage near the end. I love the impromptu game of SUP limbo at the 3:34 mark… → READ MORE

It’s been a wild nine days for Lina Augaitis, with victories in California and Hawaii punctuating what has been a big year for the Canadian in general.

Lina quit her job twelve months ago to pursue the dream of being a professional athlete and she hasn’t held back. Barely a race went by this year that she wasn’t a part of: From Florida to Nicaragua to California to Oregon to Europe to Hawaii, the SIC team rider was racking up the frequent flyer miles and stocking up her trophy cabinet.

Several standout performances at the inland races helped build on Lina’s reputation of being one of the fastest women in flat water. Only problem is… the biggest race of the year isn’t held in flat water. The biggest race of the year is the Battle of the Paddle. And this year the BOP was the complete opposite of flat. → READ MORE

The final event of the 2014 Stand Up World Series is happening this weekend has just wrapped up on the North Shore of Oahu. Based out of Turtle Bay, which sits just down the road from famed breaks such as Waimea, Sunset and Pipeline, the World Series Finals will see a very small but hyper-elite band of young guns battle it out in what could be some very interesting conditions.

One week after the all-time, wave-fueled carnage at Salt Creek, the surf at Turtle Bay looks set to throw up another chaotic weekend of racing. Yesterday the North Shore was tipping a solid 10-12 ft plus (20 ft faces) and while the swell is expected to slightly dip today and tomorrow, I’m confident there will be some entertaining chaos to enjoy. → READ MORE

We’ve just wrapped up the 2014 Battle of the Paddle here at Salt Creek, California. What a weekend… Action. Drama. Heroics. But most all: Carnage.

Yesterday’s Elite Race saw some of the most exciting stand up paddle racing ever, with a solid south swell rolling into the BOP’s new home of Salt Creek and creating some very memorable moments. Today’s Distance Race was a little mellower, however the performances were just as strong.

Click through for the full results plus the archive of our LIVE BLOG, which includes play-by-play from the racing and plenty of shots of the carnage… → READ MORE

You may not have noticed if you were tuned to SUPracer.com, but there were actually races happening somewhere other than in the Netherlands on the weekend.

The biggest was Round The Rock in Seattle, a well known race and a staple of the Pacific North West SUP community. Held just outside Seattle, Washington, the main event at Round The Rock is a 13 mile loop of Mercer Island. It’s a long, flat race that attracts large numbers and some serious talent every year.

This year that talent included Canada’s Lina Augaitis and Floridian-turned-Californian Chase Kosterlitz. The two flatwater machines were in fine form, taking out their respective 14′ divisions and also “sweeping” the event in general. → READ MORE

We’ve just wrapped up the second and final day of the 2014 Naish Columbia Gorge Paddle Challenge, with Connor Baxter and Annabel Anderson dominating an all-star field in what will surely be remembered as one of 2014’s best events.

After their respective victories in Saturday’s Course Race, the Starboard duo made it a clean sweep by claiming today’s unique “Double Downwind” event. With the winds lighter than usual for the Gorge (but much better than we’d feared last night), the elite field battled their way up the Columbia Gorge in back-to-back downwind runs. The majority of the world’s top athletes were on show today, which gave us some intense racing and a great spectacle (especially from my vantage point out on the media boat). → READ MORE

Euro Tour. Week 10. Germany. This weekend it was off to the northern German island of Fehmarn, where the “SUP World Cup” kicked off (see what we did there?) with a small but elite field of talent on display. Saturday saw the sprints while Sunday it was the long distance race, with combined results determining the overall event placings. Despite the small field, there were still a few seriously big names battling it out this weekend.

In Saturday’s sprints the Kai/Connor rivalry clicked into gear straight away, with the two young superstars locked in a duel right to the line. Kai narrowly took the honours on day one, however Connor had other ideas for the distance race on day two. → READ MORE